Chapter Two

1. Chapter Two Roots and Meaning of Culture “Ways of Life” A learned behaviors (figures 2.1,2.2)

2. Components of Culture • Culture Traits - smallest units, holy cows, chopsticks, dialects, beliefs.... • Culture Complex - from combination of Traits, fig 2.3, • Culture Region - areal extent, a portion of the earth’s surface occupied by population sharing recognizable and distinctve cultural characteristics. • Culture Realm - even larger area. (fig 2.4) • Globalization - interaction between cultures are high.

3. Interaction of People and Environment - cultural ecology: the study of the relationship between a culture group and the natural environment it occupies • Environments as Controls • Environ. Determinism – dismissed by geographers • Possibilism – people, not environments, are the dynamic forces of cultural development • Human Impacts • Cultural landscape (fig 2.5, Chaco Canyon, Easter Island) – the earth’s surface as modified by human actions, is the tangible physical record of a given culture.

4. Roots of Culture • In preagricultural periods - Hunter-gatherers (fig 2.8) • Brief History • Paleolithic (fig 2.9) • By the end of Paleolithic period, humans had spread to all the continents but Antarctic. (fig 2.10)

5. Seeds of Change • Agricultural Origins and Spread • warmer climate, increased production of food, increase “carrying capacity”, entered “Mesolithic” (Middle Stone Age) period.(11,000 - 5,000B.C.) • Domestication of plants and animals, plants -perhaps 20,000 bp. Major centers of plant and animal domestication (fig 2.12) • migration of first farmers (fig 2.13) • Neolithic Innovations - new and advanced tools/tech for agricultural env. (fig 2.14, 2.17a), religion, specialized professionals.

6. Culture Hearths • Culture Hearth - emerged in the Neolithic period (fig 2.15) • Multilinear Evolution • Cultural Convergence

7. The Structure of Culture • Ideological Subsystem • Mentifacts • Technological Subsystem • Sociological Subsystem • Sociofacts • Cultural Integration

8. Culture Change • Innovation • Diffusion • Expansion: hierarchical, contagious, stimulus • Relocation: (fig 2.21, 2.22, 2.23) • Spatial Diffusion of Wal-Mart: Contagious and Reverse Hierarchical Elements • Chinese Inventions : gunpowder, printing, and spaghetti, however, diffusion routes are not documented. • Acculturation and Transculturation (fig 2.24) Cultural Modification • Acculturation – immigrants, tribal European in areas of Roman conquest, native Americans

9. Contact between Regions • Diffusion Barriers - distance, time, • Diffusion is a selective process. • Syncretism - process of the fusion of the old and new cultures Do your online quiz for Chapters 1 and 2 – for practice only